Sytrin AirCon PAC-500 Preview

Want to take your overclock to the next level? What we are previewing
today is an exclusive product that will be on limited display during Computex
Taipei 2006, and for those that are fortunate enough to see this product first
hand should be awed by its abilities. We have had one of these hand-made prototypes
in our labs for many weeks now, and while the design is not yet finalized, it
certainly will have the capabilities to make your system go from warm to cold.
What we have to present today is the world's first look at Sytrin's AirCon PAC-500.

The Sytrin PAC-500 will be the next step up from the current PAC-400,
which we had reviewed back at Phoronix about two years ago. The AirCon PAC-400
featured a patented cooling concept for the PC air-conditioning cooling system
and advanced thermoelectric technology. The cooling power in that model was only
82 Watts. Since the arrival of the PAC-400, Sytrin has certainly been making a
splash with enthusiasts by unleashing such products as the Nextherm ICS-8200 and
KuFormula VF1 Plus. The Nextherm ICS-8200 was the world's first air-conditioned
chassis. On top of the advanced cooling abilities of the ICS-2800, the ATX chassis
had also boasted a superb build quality, power supply, and other features to remain
competitive with the advancing competition. Sytrin's most recent product, the
KuFormula VF1, was their first stab at advancing GPU cooling. While no
thermoelectric coolers were used for the KuFormula, it did use heatpipes, and
had done a remarkable job. In fact, the NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX G70 die temperature
had dropped 21°C during intensive load. To compliment Sytrin's portfolio,
they have also been investing their resources in developing additional power supply
and cooling technologies.

This year Sytrin Corporation will be sporting their wares at Computex
Taipei, which runs from June 6 to June 10 in Taiwan. Of the products to be on
display at their booth is the Sytrin AirCon PAC-500. We have had the opportunity
to have an early revision of the PAC-500 in our labs for the past couple of months.
While the model we had was largely a proof of concept and was created by hand,
it is certainly suitable for demonstration purposes. In our tests, the temperatures
for the common system components had dropped about 2°C with this prototype, while
Sytrin's hope is to effectively lower the entire system temperature by 5°C once
the product design is finalized.

Like the PAC-400, the PAC-500 continues to use a switch for solely turning
the fan on, or the fan and the thermoelectric device. There is also a LCD
display for signifying the cooling temperature. The device remains compatible
with all 5.25" drive bays. It is important to note that the photographs of
the PAC-500 part in this preview are preliminary, and the appearance of the actual
cooler will vastly change on the exterior prior to its retail arrival. We would
anticipate that the Sytrin AirCon PAC-500 will arrive later this year, and upon
its launch, we will be sharing additional information. More Computex information
to come soon at Phoronix.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.